Here's a how to guide on how to take a virtual machine you have setup with all your software/configurations and image on to a physical computer. This allows you to take snapshots and revert back to them on the VM as well as actively update and maintain VM's for re-imaging.

I am using VMware Workstation 10 and this how-to will be based off that. It may be adapted for other VM solutions.

Note - I recommend creating a basic VM of the basic setup of your machine and cloning it so you don't have to go through the initial setup process of each individual specific image setup.

9 Steps total

Step 1: Take a snapshot.

Take a snapshot of the virtual machine as you will want to revert back to this later.

1. Right click your virtual machine and then click Snapshot > Take Snapshot...
2. Follow the prompts to finish creating a snapshot of the machine.

Step 2: Power on the virtual machine.

1. Click Power on this virtual machine or any other way you prefer to boot up your VM.

Step 3: Sysprep and generalize the machine.

Here we will prepare our machine for an Out-of-Box experience. Generalizing allows you to image this onto a system even if it has dissimilar hardware.

1. Bring up an elevated command prompt window.
2. Change the directory with this command "cd \windows\system32\sysprep"
3. Run the command “sysprep /generalize /oobe /shutdown /unattend:C:\unattend.xml” (This is if you plan on including an unattend.xml answer file and needs to be changed to the location of your file).

Note - here are a few sites that offer unattend.xml generators if you want to go that route.

Step 4: Adjust settings for boot delay and boot to CD.

1. Insert Windows PE disk(if you are using an ISO skip this step).
2. With the virtual machine in VMware selected click CD/DVD under the Devices.
3. Once in this window make sure that the drop down under physical drive is pointed to the proper drive letter or that you have it pointed to the ISO file of your Windows PE.
4. I recommend adjusting your boot delay to 10 seconds so you have plenty of time to bring up the boot menu in your VM. To do this add or edit the following line to the VMX file of your virtual machine "bios.bootdelay=10000".

Step 5: Power on VM and boot to PE.

1. Power on your VM and when VMware Workstation is taking commands click in the box and press the ESC key to get into the boot menu.
2. Select CD-ROM Drive and press Enter.

Step 6: Create WIM image of system.

These steps show how to place the image in a shared folder. You may do this what ever other way you prefer.
1. Once in your VM enter command "net use N: \\MyPC\Share".
2. Enter command "diskpart".
3. Enter command "select disk 0"
4. Enter command "list volume".
5. Note your driver letters as you will need them.
6. Enter command "exit".
7. Enter command "imagex /capture VM_Drive_Letter:\ N:\Wim_Filename.wim "ImageName" (You will want to substitute your own names and locations).
8. Wait for the WIM image to be created.

Step 7: Inject driver packages.

Here you may want to create a copy of the WIM file we just created before injecting drivers in case something goes wrong and/or you plan on injecting drivers for other systems in the future.